I did a search for Ms D as she is a bit lost in all this. There's an exhausting number of references to her so I had to give up. From what I read, I wish that even the people in this world I dislike never encounter her in any way, shape or form.

It's not as simple as prosecution. McCabe has an open-and-shut case for defamation against Callinan. Defamation being a civil matter, not a criminal one. So he will be considerably poorer on the basis of yesterday's findings.

Callinan presumably broke one if not many internal disciplinary garda rules. Punishments are up to and including being dismissed from the force. The issue is that he is not a garda anymore, so can't be disciplined.

I can't think of any criminal law he broke. Maybe someone else can.

His pension cannot be touched, as it is an accrued property right. I think this issue has to be fixed, for all classes of public servant. There really has to be a financial sanction for this kind of behaviour. Callinan has a pension of €85k for life. This is despite having used his office (national chief of police and head of intelligence) to spread the most serious, untrue allegations about one of his staff that you can imagine. It is very hard to explain this to the taxpayers paying his pension.

McCabe made allegations some were found to be true (penalty points) some not (rookie cops in Cavan made mistakes in investigations but it wasn't deliberate or malign).

Callinan and Taylor ran a smear campaign.

The sexual allegation was genuinely made but it was found to have no case to be answered and the Tusla investigation was a genuine mistake?

O'Sullivan was trying to do the right thing as Commissioner but Taylor ran a smear against her leading to her resignation?

Fitzgerald and the DoJ was correct in keeping a remove from the Guard's legal strategy.

Other than Callinan and Taylor all other parties were acting in good faith but some made terrible errors in practice - like Tusla? Others it looked bad but were actually correct - Fitzgerald?

It's very confusing.

No it's much worse than that. E.g. Just from my scanning of the Ms D references. She brought up the allegation in HSE counselling years after it had been dismissed having just signed a form acknowledging that all allegations would get reported to authorities. The whole allegation at root of this is imagined. And it's not even an imagined crime i.e. What's she's imagined doesn't even constitute a crime. But she still took a GSOC complaint against the investigating officer, whose investigation was exemplary. And then she started contacting journalists and meeting politicians.

As for Tusla their whole conduct is scary. If there's such a crime as "parent abuse" then they're perpetrating it on a daily basis.

McCabe made allegations some were found to be true (penalty points) some not (rookie cops in Cavan made mistakes in investigations but it wasn't deliberate or malign).

Callinan and Taylor ran a smear campaign.

The sexual allegation was genuinely made but it was found to have no case to be answered and the Tusla investigation was a genuine mistake?

O'Sullivan was trying to do the right thing as Commissioner but Taylor ran a smear against her leading to her resignation?

Fitzgerald and the DoJ was correct in keeping a remove from the Guard's legal strategy.

Other than Callinan and Taylor all other parties were acting in good faith but some made terrible errors in practice - like Tusla? Others it looked bad but were actually correct - Fitzgerald?

It's very confusing.

No, the report is not confusing (though it is quite long) but you have created a total travesty. You should blush when you read Judge Charlton's comments on "spin"

Quote:

It seems that our public life is now to be dominated by spin and that plan speaking is elided in favour of meaningless public relations speak. This is a hideous development in Irish public life.

Here is a fairer summary of the report in regard to the points you mention:

McCabe is an honest cop who was persecuted because he made allegations which were found to be true (penalty points, incompetence/indolence in Cavan/Monaghan, cover-up by superiors) although the mistakes in investigations were not shown to be deliberate or malicious.

Callinan and Taylor ran a vile smear campaign.

O'Sullivan was doing the right thing as Commissioner.

Callinan and Taylor behaved disgracefully but they are part of a culture within the Gardai that has been the subject of numerous tribunals/enquiries and which must be eradicated.

There was no basis whatever for the sexual allegation against McCabe. It was magnified by an horrendous error which Tusla then failed to cure through stupendous incompetence over many years. At least Tusla's leaders acknowledged the problem, unlike the Garda.

Fitzgerald and the DoJ was correct in keeping a remove from the Guard's legal strategy.

What has happened to public service that those who stand up for decent standards of performance are vilified?

This must be one of the most unlikely coincidences ever to be accepted by any judicial tribunal. Yet, coincidence it was. All of thewitnesses were honest. The computer analysis checks out absolutely correctly. So do the paper files. When the mistake was discovered nearly a year later in 2014 when Maurice McCabe was even better known, the person who made it did all she could to rectify it. It was given continued life, notwithstanding her efforts, because of startling inefficiency and indolence within social services.

It wasn't a terrible conspiracy by Garda management and the social services to destroy a whistleblower. It was a stupid mistake which spread through the system and which, through sheer incompetence and laziness, was allowed to fester even after everyone should have known it was a mistake. Indeed, anyone reading the report should have realised the problem because

Quote:

two inconsistent names appeared on the paperwork, along with a senseless jumble of allegations.

The corruption and incompetence is systemic and those in the hierarchy of the system hold the system up. That is the conspiracy.

So long as reports like this can be produced, there is hope for us all but it must be a bitter experience for Peter Charleton to go over the same ground as the Morris Tribunal where he was Counsel and to realise, more than 10 years after its final report and a series of other reports, that the Garda culture is unchanged.

Charleton has done a great service in sifting the truth from rumour and he doesn't use the "systemic problems" as a cop-out. He vindicates some and condemns others, often in surprising ways. No surprise that he vindicated McCabe but he eviscerates Callinan and Taylor. They are likely to become the Patrick Nearys of the justice system - universally reviled but living comfortably on their pensions. Taylor will have to fight for his but imagine how much dirt he has on his colleagues. Noreen O'Sullivan and Frances Taylor are vindicated. Unlike Callinan, they were not out to get McCabe. But the Tribunal was not asked a basic question: did they advance the cause of Garda reform? Fitzgerald was around for 20 years and then seemed to float to the top as others (Shatter and Kenny) fell/were pushed. She set up Tusla but the Tribunal didn't get into that.

With all the mud flying from this report, I see one very lucky boy who seems, for the first time in his long career, to be flying below the media radar. I refer to the solicitor Gerald Kean. Sorry, that's Doctor Gerald Kean, who went from a humble BCL to an Honorary Doctorate from the American University in Florida. If anyone knows anything about this institution of higher learning, please share. Don't bother googling, I've tried. Doctor Kean defamed McCabe on Marian Finucane in 2014 because he had been fed lies by Callinan. He dodged the subsequent libel case because RTE (i.e. licence payers ) picked up the tab.

The Tribunal report's section dealing with him is well worth a read. It begins with this stinging rebuke:

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The tribunal now turns to a witness who, the tribunal is satisfied, heard or knew about the tribunal’s public appeal for information that was broadcast in February 2017. It was only through the diligence of tribunal counsel, sorting through tens of thousands of items of discovered documents, that the quite astonishing evidence that follows was uncovered. The tribunal regards the evidence as strongly speaking to a strong animus by Commissioner Martin Callinan against MauriceMcCabe.

This reluctance to assist the Tribunal would be remiss for any ordinary citizen but Doctor Kean is a solicitor i.e. an officer of the court who must act with the highest standards of conduct. He will be well aware of the superior courts' jurisdiction

Quote:

to enforce honourable conduct by an officer of the court. The supervisory role of the court is separate to that of the Law Society or the Legal Services Regulator, and allows the court to discipline or penalise solicitors who have failed in their duty to the court.

But this is Ireland so Doctor Kean will get away with this but I'd love to be there if he ever appears before the Supreme Court with Peter Charleton on the bench.

Marian discussed the report this morning but told us nothing about her own starring role. Funny, but that seems to be the way of things with media types. All for transparency but they hate mirrors